Rants Archives
Fried pistachio
By on April 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I had these great transcendent plans of getting stuff done since before spring break. And here, HERE! I am the day before everything is due and still not done. My hopes right this moment is that if I begin writing this post, I will get in the groove of writing forever and before I know it everything will be written.
wish you were here
Live in Peace with One Another
By on May 6, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)
I decided to post some great quotes I’ve heard recently. I want these quotes to be proposals for further thought and discussion. In other words, this is just the beginning.
“Folks, we’re getting ecumenical in this place.”
Dr. Carole Lambert
“Using the Bible as a weapon of mass oppression.”
Abel Lopez
“…God as we know her…”
Abel Lopez
“With full faith in love, in the convergence of whose universal light of truth, the assurance of individualism may cast no shadow, either of doubt or egotism, is this stated to be the working sketch for the greatest of living dramatic compositions. The cast for it shall be the whole of humanity; the settings — the future ages of temporality.”
Buckminster Fuller
“Live for each other.”
Yogi Tea
This is just mean
By on October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Margot has been really into blogging lately.
I can be very particular sometimes. By “particular” I mean I can be an asshole. There are certain things that bother me to no end. Maybe talking about them will help?
Two Spaces
I really can’t handle when people put two spaces after a period. It frustrates the crap out of me. YOU AREN’T USING A TYPEWRITER. Welcome to the 21st century. We use computers. We don’t use monospaced type anymore. There is no need for the extra space. And it’s not a specific kind of person who does this. It’s everyone. I don’t really understand. When I have to remove all those extra spaces, oh man! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE remember! Never EVER put two spaces after a period. It’s WRONG.
Excel
I hate excel. I hate having to take text from excel and bring it into quark. Maybe it’s just not my thing. I’ve never really needed to use it for anything. I’m not really even sure what it’s purpose is. The only thing I’ve seen them used for is lists. Can’t you use word instead? There is so much less work in formatting when using word vs. excel.
“Free”
The other thing that has been getting to me lately is about cost. People forget that everything costs something. Nothing is free. The food in the fridge was bought by someone who carried it in their backpack on their bike in the sun. So when you eat it that really really sucks. Also, websites aren’t free. Not only are their hosting/software fees, there is the time it takes to make stuff. I have felt frustrated at times about EM and PF in regards to this. I’m going to stop here before it goes too far. Also, Mikey really has said it best:
Well, there is still a fee, it’s just invisible to you. A lot of resources go into creating this space (examples: hosting fees, design work, etc on UHX) and maintaining it.But we allow certain forms of advertising, such as when our friends make things, but we don’t allow other less targeted forms (like spam).
There is always a cost to getting the word out: paying for posters, sending CDs out for review, or just the time it takes… A lot of “fee-for-speech” advertising models (newspapers, magazines, etc) is more ethical because there is a clear line between editorial and advertising. On UHX that line is blurred because the editorial is making the product and the advertisements and it’s all blurred together.
How do you promote shows at the DOS w/o advertising them?
Is advertising okay if it comes from a trusted source?
While some of the ways in which advertising happens can be sleazy, is the entire idea of paying for promotion evil? And if so, where does that leave “news” and other ad-based media?
How can we know what is happening in far away places unless someone foots the bill? Removing advertising would be worse for the world than removing religion.(via EMX)
Toby is the worst
By on November 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Sometimes I am a critical bastard. It’s little things like I am very critical of peoples’ docks or their desktops or any sort of computer organization. There are three intensities of my criticality. There is the most severe. I hate cluttered desktops. I can’t stand it. It stresses me out. It’s disorganized and unproductive. So that’s a Three. A Two would probably be hot corners. Hot corners I can understand, but I will never use them. Ever. I can somewhat understand how people can deal with them, but ugh. A One is more of a nonessential. A One is looking at peoples’ docks. I feel very smug when I see docks that are the default size and have all the original applications. Somehow it makes me feel cool for putting my cool applications in my dock.
That’s my scale. Three is completely unacceptable. One is nonessential. (Most Ones are things I have done in the past.)
Three
A cluttered desktop
Blowing your nose in a restaurant
Listing all the bands you listen to
Two
Hot corners
Dock Hiding
Two spaces after a period
Not using smart quotes
Commercials on The Office webisodes
Teeth whitening
One
An unmodified dock
Blogger
Windows
Arial
Hotmail
Garden State
Bob Marley
Mispronouncing ‘preface’
(Also, I don’t really like Facebook. I just wanted to put that out there. I couldn’t decide how to classify that. What number would a necessary evil be?)
What brought this up had to do with working out the templates for EM. I don’t like the space between the navigation and the first line of text. I worked so long trying to figure out what was making it do that. It’s too much. But then I started looking around at other sites and they all have it too! So I immediately think they aren’t smart enough to figure it out either. CAN IT BE HELPED?!
I’ve been thinking a lot about Graphic Design lately
By on May 1, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
What is Graphic Design exactly? I really thought I knew, but of late it’s become more confused and gray. Why does Graphic Design exist? The purpose is utility, not art. The purpose of Graphic Design is clear communication. This isn’t meant to be a definite answer, but to start some sort of dialogue about what Graphic Design is.
Working with clients
In this view, a client comes to you with a job. You take the content you and try to mold it into the most compelling outcome. The main feedback that you get is from the client. From my (limited) experience, this is how the print world works. You can propose different ideas to the client and try to sell them on what would work best. It feels very intuitive. Your decisions are often based on experience and what you know has worked in the past.
The economics of Graphic Design
A Graphic Designer is not self sufficient. The very nature of the profession depends upon others. Graphic Designers work for the client, for the money. That’s what it really comes down to. It is love of the the craft, but it does make a living. Thinking about the economics of Graphic Design becomes much more interesting and measurable when it comes to the web. A lot of what I’ve been learning at my new job is this. Design is measured by its success. How many people complete the form? What are the numbers? Do people prefer red to blue? And what not. What is good Graphic Design in this model? Is it good if it sells a lot but looks like garbage?
Aesthetics?
What consideration should be even to aesthetics? In school we learned that good design follows rules (or breaks them eloquently). But what if beauty doesn’t sell? Ideally, design that follows the rules and is built on a grid and is typeset well will sell. I believe this deeply. But what if you can be mathematically proven wrong? If this ad makes a lot of money is it good design? If good design is clear communication and this ad speaks to people who are wanting to refinance their home it must be good design? I know you might think, “of course it isn’t good design.” But it has really got me questioning things. If weird poorly designed (ha!) flash ads work as a marketing tool than who am I to say they aren’t good Graphic Design. Is it me being an elitist? Does it really help anyone for me to ream somebody for having no consideration for typesetting?
Type
Ligatures, kerning, smart quotes, none of these really exist on the web the way they do traditionally in print. This is a real loss to me. I do what I can, but there are many inconsistencies to worry about. There is no way to anticipate for dynamic content. I mean, I have smart quotes happening, I specify font size and line height, but I can’t really force there to be no widows or orphans, especially on content I’m not generating. Also, I use Helvetica for this blog, but if you view it on a Windows machine or even in a feed reader chances are you are reading it in Arial. Helvetica and Arial are 2 fairly different typefaces (to say the least). They look and work in very different ways. They will even render differently render in different browsers on the same operating system. Ugh.
What do you think?
This is not to be a one sided conversation. What do you think makes good design? You don’t have to be a Graphic Designer to answer this. Are you attracted to ads like the one above? Do you gravitate to minimalism and clean design? Do you own a mac? Do you hate anti-aliasing on Windows?
3 things I learned about England
By on June 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)
- England has no good beer.
Period. We had an IPA that tasted like nothing. Worst than nothing. It was gross. And Cask Ales? BAH! - England loves Gill Sans.
Gill Sans is the Helvetica of England. - England has very good Indian food.
While there I had the best Dosa of my life.
